InNorse mythology,Singasteinn (Old Norse "singing stone" or "chanting stone") is an object that appears in the account ofLoki andHeimdall's fight in the form ofseals. The object is solely attested in theskaldic poemHúsdrápa. Some scholars have interpreted it as the location of the struggle, others as the object they were struggling over.
In theProse Edda,Snorri Sturluson interprets Singasteinn as theskerry at which Loki and Heimdall fought. Referring to the same poem, he says that Heimdall may be called "Frequenter of Vágasker ["waves-skerry"] and Singasteinn";[3] this gives another name for the skerry[4] and this is also where he states that they were in the form of seals, showing that there was more of the poem on this story. Brodeur has followed Snorri in his translation, and so have some scholarly analyses. For example,Gabriel Turville-Petre says, "Singasteinn was evidently a rock far out at sea."[5]Viktor Rydberg, following Snorri in seeing the struggle as over Freyja's necklaceBrísingamen, went a step further and saw the necklace as having been lying on the skerry.[6]
Alternativelyat singasteini has been taken to refer to what Heimdall and Loki were fighting over, parallel to thehafnýra fǫgru, "beautiful sea-kidney" (which Brodeur rendered as simply "stone"). In this light, there is an attractive emendation ofsingasteini tosignasteini, "magic stone, amulet."[7] Several scholars have pointed out that both "sea-kidney" and "magic stone" fit less well with Brísingamen, a necklace, than withCaribbean drift-seeds that can be found on the beaches of Iceland,Orkney, theHebrides and the Scandinavian mainland and have been traditionally used as amulets, particularly to ease childbirth; their European names includevettenyrer,wight (Old Norsevættr) kidneys.[7][8][9][10]
^Skáldskaparmál ch. 23, cited from Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages,HúsdrápaArchived 2011-07-06 at theWayback Machine verse 2, Skaldic Project Academic Body, University of Sydney, retrieved June 2, 2010.
^tilsækir Vágaskers ok Singasteins,Skáldskaparmál ch. 15; Brodeur translationp. 113, Old Norse text in parallel atvoluspa.org.
^Wilhelm Heizmann, "Der Raub des Brísingamen, oder: Worum geht es inHúsdrápa 2?"Analecta Septentrionalia: Papers on the History of North Germanic Culture and Literature, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Ergänzungsbände 65, Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2009,ISBN978-3-11-021869-5, 502–30,p. 512(in German) suggests that Vágasker was simply Snorri's interpretation of Singasteinn, which was unclear to him.
^abAudrey Meaney, "Drift Seeds and the Brísingamen",Folklore 94.1 (1983) 33–39,p. 33.
^Jan de Vries,Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, Volume 2, 2nd ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1957, repr. as 3rd ed. 1970,OCLC466619179, pp. 260, 311–12(in German), using this as the basis for arguing that Brísingamen only later came to be thought of as aman, a necklace, after the original idea of an amulet bound on the hips had faded.
^Heizmann,p. 512 says this connection has been made "fairly often."
Kurt Schier. "Húsdrápa 2. Heimdall, Loki und die Meerniere." in Helmut Birkhan, ed.Festgabe für Otto Höfler zum 75. Geburtstag. Philologica Germanica 3. Vienna: Braumüller, 1976.ISBN978-3-7003-0131-8. 577–88 - an influential exposition of the location interpretation(in German).
Birger Pering.Heimdall: Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Verständnis der altnordischen Götterwelt. Diss. Lund University. Lund: Gleerup, 1941.OCLC459397212 - the first exposition of the birthstone interpretation(in German).
